Take A Tour Of colour, The $41 Million App Everyone Is Freaking Out About

Photo: colour.com

Last night news broke that legendary VC firms Sequoia and Bain Capital were investing $41 million in photo sharing app colour.And that was before it had launched.

The people behind colour have impressive resumes, so the investment could be justified on that level. Two prominent names among colour’s founders: Bill Ngyuen, who sold music sharing app Lala to Apple, and Peter Pham formerly CEO of BillShrink.

Regardless of those names, it caused people in the tech world to start hyperventilating. After all, it is a lot of money. And it is in a crowded space.

But those people hadn’t played with the app. Maybe colour is amazing. Maybe it will earn Sequoia and Bain a crazy return on their money.

We took colour for a short spin this morning.

We have bad news for those VCs. On first blush, the haters are right. It’s a strange experience, not worth $41 million.

But, it’s the early days, so there’s still a chance it could be a hit. Never say never. Especially when a company has enough cash in the bank to pivot, iterate, or do whatever it takes to be a success.

Now, see what all the fuss is about …

A mixed bag of reviews. Largely negative. One person even complained about the money colour raised.

And here is the first screen you see. Minimalist.

Enter your first name.

And take a photo of yourself. It's all very mysterious.

Went with this photo. Probably not the best photo.

And now we're at this screen. And we have no idea what to do.

We hit one of the buttons and it took us here.

The problem seems to be that nobody is using the app yet. So, we just get the one photo.

For an app with so few options, it's still pretty confusing. Ended up here, not really sure how.

Decided to add another photo to the mix.

Here's the commenting system for each photo.

We can make a new group, but we don't know what that means exactly.

This is a sort of nice design touch. You can see all of your photos by date.

Here's a gallery of our photos.

If we want to share our photos we have some options. But, is this to share one photo? Or many?

Turns out it's many! All of our colour photos are shared for the world.

And here's the website for them ...

So, will this become an app we use?

On first blush, there's almost zero chance we return to this app. Our friends aren't in it. It's confusing. Sharing photos isn't easy or intuitive. It's not very fun.

However, if for some reason a lot of people start using the app and we can see photos from people around us, there could be something to the app. Sort of like a control Chatroulette. But to get there it needs users. And it's hard to see that happening.

For now, we'll stick with Instagram as our photo app of choice.

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